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I don't understand why, with all the UI/UX experience we have with hypertext, that have not moved the semantic of a hyperlink beyond a dumb one-way pointer. As

I don't understand why, with all the UI/UX experience we have with hypertext, that have not moved the semantic of a hyperlink beyond a dumb one-way pointer. Assuming that a maximal hypertextual interface needs to dynamically display relationships (rather than just a huge tag cloud or making all the body text hyperlink blue), a machine-readable characterization of the nature of those relationships would be invaluable. Does my text refute the linked resource? Or support it, or provide related factual statements, or is it chronologically or conceptually derivative? Some sort of ontological palette to write with could produce something that could be traversed in all sorts of novel ways. It would give writers more agency over external systems that will otherwise apply their own semantic meaning to the text, and its links. Also, Hypertext (HTML, anyway) is oddly asymmetrical in its normal usage. We link a small string of text within a document, one-way, to the entirety an entire separate document. I think convention is the primary obstacle, but why can't we describe a relationship from our entire document to some other resource?

_jal 3y ago
If you haven't run across it, you should read up on Ted Nelson's Xanadu project. I've heard different arguments for why that failed. I think the likeliest is just that simple and dumb is often more successful than complex and nuanced. > I think convention is the primary obstacle At this point, I think the existence of the web as it is is the primary obstacle. Business models built on laws and case rulings depend on links as they currently exist. So changes here would need to get buy in from those folks, browser makers, standards body folks (but I repeat myself), and then would have to somehow be reconciled with laws that make assumptions about how they work. Easy peasy.
dredmorbius 3y ago
As _jal notes, Xanadu affords this. (I've read about and watched demonstrations of the project, I've not used it.) This is also a feature of many wiki systems, and in particular Mediawiki (the engine behind Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource, etc.). Here, both the linking and linked pages are aware of the link, at least so long as they occur within the same underlying Wiki. External links, including links to other Wikis (both within and outside the Wikipedia Foundation's remit) aren't treated like this, however. Where it exists, though, it's a powerful model. This is still only a subset of the features you're referring to, though again Mediawiki has some more complex relationships as well, through tools such as infoboxes, categories (which collect numerous other related pages), and more. Within Wikipedia inclusion in a category page is achieved not by editing the category page, but by editing the included page to indicate that it's a part of that category, which is quite powerful. You might also want to look at various notions of the semantic web which have been floated. Limited adoption seems to be largely a combination of coordination problem and general complexity. Basic HTML is reasonably simple, especially where relationships between pages (and pages on multiple sites) are concerned.

_jal 3y ago

If you haven't run across it, you should read up on Ted Nelson's Xanadu project. I've heard different arguments for why that failed. I think the likeliest is just that simple and dumb is often more successful than complex and nuanced. > I think convention is the primary obstacle At this point, I think the existence of the web as it is is the primary obstacle. Business models built on laws and case rulings depend on links as they currently exist. So changes here would need to get buy in from those folks, browser makers, standards body folks (but I repeat myself), and then would have to somehow be reconciled with laws that make assumptions about how they work. Easy peasy.

dredmorbius 3y ago

As _jal notes, Xanadu affords this. (I've read about and watched demonstrations of the project, I've not used it.) This is also a feature of many wiki systems, and in particular Mediawiki (the engine behind Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource, etc.). Here, both the linking and linked pages are aware of the link, at least so long as they occur within the same underlying Wiki. External links, including links to other Wikis (both within and outside the Wikipedia Foundation's remit) aren't treated like this, however. Where it exists, though, it's a powerful model. This is still only a subset of the features you're referring to, though again Mediawiki has some more complex relationships as well, through tools such as infoboxes, categories (which collect numerous other related pages), and more. Within Wikipedia inclusion in a category page is achieved not by editing the category page, but by editing the included page to indicate that it's a part of that category, which is quite powerful. You might also want to look at various notions of the semantic web which have been floated. Limited adoption seems to be largely a combination of coordination problem and general complexity. Basic HTML is reasonably simple, especially where relationships between pages (and pages on multiple sites) are concerned.